A SCOT fighting to provide aid to war-torn Yemen yesterday said the world is turning a blind eye to one of the worst humanitarian disasters he has ever seen.

Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nation’s coordinator for one of the Arab world’s poorest countries, described how parents are being forced to choose which of their children will starve as civil war continues to kill thousands of people.

Around 14million people don’t have enough food and years of conflict has left the country’s economic system and infrastructure in tatters.

Read More

Top news stories today

Jamie, from Glasgow’s east end, told the Daily Record of the heartbreaking scenes he and his team have witnessed.

He said: “Families who have been displaced are living in very fragile camps on the sides of roads in dusty planes.

“You go inside a makeshift tent and there is a mother there on her own with four or five kids all under the age of eight and she isn’t able to feed them.

“No matter what we bring her, we can’t feed them forever. At some point, those kids will die, slowly but surely, and she has to make a choice of who she feeds over or above the other ones, because she can’t get enough for them.

Read More

“It says on the death certificate pneumonia or they died of respiratory infection, but they didn’t – it’s because of malnutrition. You can’t record malnutrition and no one knows the numbers that have died.”

Nearly two years of war between a Saudi-led Arab coalition and the Iran-backed Houthi movement has brought Yemen to its knees.

In March last year, Shia Houthi rebels took over the capital Sanaa. This sparked the coalition of Middle Eastern states to start a bombing campaign at the request of the exiled government.

Read More

As Prime Minister Theresa May met Arab leaders in the Gulf yesterday, Jamie added: “Yemen is a terrible tragedy that seems to have fallen off the radar screens because it’s not Iraq, Mosul, Syria, or Aleppo.

“The figures we have seen are only going to be exasperated in the next few months. Unless we can do something to fill that gap with food supplies or humanitarian resources, the numbers will only increase.

“From the crises I’ve seen, this one is different because it has been driven by political forces and the human dimension has been forgotten because it’s uncomfortable for people.

“Money is important but it’s not just about money. It’s the need for political commitment from member states to put this on the radar screen.

“The humanitarian consequences of political inaction on this one are unforgivable.”